El papel de las políticas públicas y sus desafíos actuales

The foundation for formal education was laid by the missionaries. They introduced reading to spread Christianity and taught practical subjects like Carpentry and Gardening (Alyw and Schech, 2004). Schooling was restricted to basic literacy and vocational skills. The philosophical foundation for British educational policy in Kenya in the 1920’s was twofold: to create a small semi- literate indigenous population of Christians and to educate Africans through a village-oriented agriculture and skill-based curriculum. Governments in British colonies did not develop comprehensive educational policies (Yamada, 2008). The Fraser Report (1909) proposed a separate education system for the Whites. Ultimately, the government set up their own schools thus promoting the colonial segregation policy for the Europeans, Asians and Africans (Emenyonu, 2004).

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The need for agricultural and vocational education was stressed by the Phelps- Stokes Commission in 1924 which criticised the African educational system as too literal and impractical for the realities of peasant-based African societies (Oketch and Rolleston, 2007; Natsoulas, 1998). According to Somerset (2007) only a few Africans managed to gain access to primary education and they could not go beyond four years of education because of the Grade IV Common Entrance Examinations. People who managed to achieve secondary education were rewarded with civil service jobs (Oketch and Rolleston, 2007) and were highly respected and this set them apart from the rest of the population. Meanwhile, pupils with SEN continued to be educated in special schools (Abilla, 1988).

Africans were required to sit for ‘the highly-competitive Common Entrance Examination (CEE) after four years in school’, instead of seven like the Whites and Asians (Somerset, 2009, p234). Somerset explains that only 45,000 out of 135,292 (33.5%) African CEE candidates qualified to enter Grade 5 in 1960. The system continued up to 1963. After independence, the focus changed to wider access to educational opportunities for the African majority, (Somerset, 2009). Alyw and Schech (2004) aver that the expenditure per pupil was more than five times higher for Europeans than for Africans as shown in Table 3, while Table 4 shows the number of primary schools and pupils from 1961 to 1963.

Table 3: Education Expenditure by Race - 1930

Source: (Alwy and Schech, 2004 pg, 270)

Race Pupils in state and state‐ aided schools Total expenditure in US Dollars Expenditure per pupil in US dollars African 6,948  232,293  33.4  Asian 1,900  70,329  37.0  European 776  140,041  180.5  Total 9,624  442,663  45.9       

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Table 4: Number of schools and pupils: 1961 - 1963

Source: (Eshiwani, 1993)

A large majority of children of school-going age were not in school and a small number had passed through the system. This is evidenced by the shortage of educated and trained local manpower (Alwy and Schech, 2004) that was important and highly needed for economic and social development of the new nation. In 1948, the Beecher Report visualized the importance of missions as influential in the regular provision of both primary and secondary education to African children. It recognised that the African education system was uncoordinated and unplanned. This, as posited by Yamada (2008) and Oketch and Rolleston (2007), clearly marked the essence of establishing clear structures and standards of educational practice. The Beecher Report recommended the importance of ‘moral’ Christian teaching in schools in order to create morally sound, economically valuable citizens at all levels of African society. Literacy- based education was ridiculed for increasing the aspirations of Africans to achieve the same status as Europeans and instilling contempt for African culture (Yamada, 2008). The Africans critically perceived this report as a bias to the independent schools that had developed as a reaction towards the missionaries in 1920 (Natsoulas, 1998).

Natsoulas (1998) also elucidates that the situation deteriorated, attracting the attention of a wide range of organisations with an international and interdenominational appeal to support the rehabilitation of the dependants of detainees. Scarcity of resources and colonial administration inefficiencies encumbered the church (Stuart, 2008) and mission contributions for rehabilitation and this rendered the venture unsuccessful. The relations between Africans and Europeans in Kenya worsened as nationalist agitation grew and civil servants and

Year Primary Schools No. of Pupils

1961 7,725  870,448 

1962 6,198  935,766, 

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mission officials focussed their efforts on government policies about race relations. Several Africans who experienced colonial education account that it undermined traditional societies by introducing an individualistic Eurocentric value system (Ingstad and Grunt, 2007; Natsoulas, 1998; Eshiwani, 1993) that was strange to African communal traditions and isolated students from their local communities.

The first services for people with disabilities date back to 1946 when different missionaries like the Salvation Army Church established a rehabilitation programme for blind men (Abilla, 1988) and other people who had been maimed or wounded in the Second World War. Later this programme was changed into the first school for blind children in Kenya, the Salvation Army High School. The Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist churches established special institutions for visual, hearing and physical disabilities. Other services were provided over time (Stuart, 2008; Abilla, 1988) by organisations such as the Kenya Societies for the Blind, Mentally Handicapped and for Deaf children including the Association for the Physically Disabled of Kenya respectively. To a great extent, most of the special education developments were, up to the 1970s, facilitated by volunteers and private organisations as well as the missionaries. The government provided the general curriculum and sponsored training for teachers for children with hearing impairments in the 1960s’, while liaising with the International Labour Organisation on Vocational and Rehabilitation Training Programmes in the 1970s’.

It was not until the 1980s’ that the first draft for SNE policy was prepared. The government relied on circulars, papers and commissions of education (these reports will be discussed in section 2.1.15 and in more detail in section two of chapter three). The Kenya Institute of Special Needs (KISE) was set up in 1986 under the sponsorship of the Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA). The government focussed on the expansion of primary and secondary education from the 1960s’ through to the 1980s’ with a few development programmes designed for special education (Daun, 2000; Abilla, 1988) until after 1990. However, a decline due to economic recession (Oketch

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and Rolleston, 2007, Somerset, 2007; Sifuna, 2007; Daun, 2000) structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) and other economic factors contributed to the educational decline in the same sector.